Vol. 2, Issue 10: Stop and Frisk—Baltimore to Chicago
CPD officers monitor the historic Bud Biliken Parade on Chicago's South Siode Photo by Vidura Jang Bahadur
Former Chicago Superintendent Garry McCarthy in 2012. Photo by Darryl Holliday
At Issue: Constitutional Policing
The Justice Department’s investigation of the Baltimore Police Department offers a preview of many of the issues at play in the agency’s current investigation of the Chicago Police Department.
Along with excessive force and retaliation against First Amendment activities, the report focuses on unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests, with enforcement strategies that “produce severe and unjustified disparities” by disproportionately targeting African Americans.
The problems were “driven by systemic deficiencies in BPD’s policies, training, supervision, and accountability structures that fail to equip officers with the tools they need to police effectively and within the bounds of federal law,” according to the report.
The violations stemmed from a “zero tolerance street enforcement” approach that prioritized high numbers of stops, searches, and arrests, with excessive force resulting from “overly aggressive tactics that unnecessarily escalate encounters [and] increase tensions.”
Many of these issues are relevant to Chicago, though some policy changes have been enacted in recent months.
The report provides the foundation for negotiations over a consent decree “to develop enduring remedies.” The focus is on “constitutional policing.” The report notes that “constitutional, community-oriented policing is proactive policing,” adding, “A commitment to constitutional policing builds trust that enhances crime-fighting efforts and officer safety.”
Constitutional Policing. What does that term mean? A 2015 report from the Police Executive Research Forum, based on a conference involving police chiefs, researchers, and activists, defines it simply as “legal policing” and later as policing that “protect[s] everyone’s rights and provide[s] equal protection under the law.”
Problematic tactics highlighted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) report include many that have been used by the Chicago Police Department (CPD), such as stop-and-frisk. Constitutional concerns arise when stop-and-frisk is used “programmatically and intensively in high-crime marginalized communities to deter gun carrying or to generally send a message,” rather than in individual situations where officers have reason to believe there may be danger.
“Hot spot policing” can alienate the community and “has implications for legitimacy and issues of racial bias” when it is implemented without coordination with the community. The report notes that “hot spot neighborhoods are not only home to the most crime but also to the most victims and witnesses,” emphasizing that “police must be responsive to the concerns that residents express.” Such deployments can feel like a military occupation when community members are targeted indiscriminately, particularly when “zero tolerance” and “broken windows” approaches are combined, limiting officer discretion over petty violations.
Stop and Frisk. Steve Chapman notes that out of 300,000 stops conducted by Baltimore police over several years, only 3.7% resulted in arrests. “Thousands of innocent citizens were inconvenienced, humiliated, and deprived of their freedom,” he writes in the Chicago Tribune. “Some were repeatedly victimized; one middle-aged African American man was stopped 30 times and never charged.”
For Black and Hispanic individuals, Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches have been disregarded, he argues.
Last year, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report found an astonishing 250,000 CPD stops during the previous summer that did not result in arrests. According to the report, required records revealed that officers provided inadequate or illegal justifications for half of these stops. Additionally, Black individuals were disproportionately targeted—precisely the type of stop that a federal court in New York deemed unconstitutional in 2013.
The CPD has “set aside” a policy implemented by former Superintendent Garry McCarthy, which encouraged repeatedly stopping and frisking individuals to deter drug possession and illegal weapons carrying, WBEZ recently reported. As a result, CPD stops have decreased by 84% compared to the same period last year.
Some have linked the city’s recent increase in murders to the decline in stop-and-frisk encounters. However, WBEZ reported that the department is seizing just as many firearms this year as it did last year.
In New York City, the murder rate actually dropped significantly during the same months that the use of stop-and-frisk was sharply reduced, according to a recent report by the Brennan Center.
Training. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) report on constitutional policing emphasizes that “effective change is not possible without buy-in from the rank and file” and that “to achieve such buy-in, police leaders must acknowledge that in many cases, it was their departments’ policies, training, and internal messaging that have led to the challenges officers on the street are now facing.”
The report further states: “Taking responsibility in this way lets officers know that their leaders do not fault them for the sometimes fractured relationship between the police and the communities they serve, and that the department will work with them to establish new practices and rebuild relationships of trust with the community.”
Last week in Chicago, videos of the police shooting of Paul O’Neal—which appears to be a clear case of excessive force—show multiple policy violations and “raise questions about the extent and quality of the Police Department’s training,” experts told the Chicago Tribune. Second City Cop reviewed the videos, noted a series of “tactically unsound actions,” and commented, “You perform as you train, and we’re sorry, this appears to be an absolute failure of training.”
